I’m sure the neighbors would love it….

I can not believe that Christmas is one week from today! How did this happen? By my estimation it should really only be around the first week of November. I hate how when you get older, time moves faster. How many hours did I spend as a kid waiting for Christmas and wishing it would hurry up? I remember the time it took to go from Thanksgiving to Christmas seemed like months and months. Now it seems like days.

I feel like Thanksgiving was last week, and that explains why our yard is still covered with leaves and our house isn’t decorated for Christmas. (Well, we pulled out our pre-lit tree and plugged it in, but other than that its naked.)

This makes me sad. I LOVE Christmas, and I love decorating for Christmas, but we just haven’t made the time for it this year. First of all I’ve been super busy trying to finish up school (just waiting on a few final grades, woo hoo!!). Secondly, we’re still kind of unpacking and arranging the house. Our house isn’t really decorated, so it kind of doesn’t make sense to pull out more decorations (do you put your nativity scene on top of the pile of unpacked boxes?) As much as this bothers me, I keep telling myself we’ll do better next year, and we’ll be able to hit the after Christmas sales and stock up on decorations for next year. (I’ve already told Stephen my Christmas goal is much like my chandelier goal–one in every room). I think I’ll be more successful with the trees.

Someday, hopefully next year, we’ll be in better shape. We’ll have the house clean and all the leaves raked up before Thanksgiving so that weekend we can transform our house into our own magical Christmas wonderland, inside and out. There will be trees and snowflakes and lights and mistletoe, oh it will be glorious. Buddy the Elf himself will be proud.

Maybe we’ll even have enough time to do something this. We still haven’t met a lot of our neighbors and I’m sure this is a good way to break the ice.

We could go traditional:

Or a new take on a traditional song; (my sister and I always used to laugh at this version. First of all, isn’t Barbara Streisand Jewish?)

Or we could do a childhood favorite (and my current cell phone ring):

Or perhaps a new favorite:

Or we could just rock out (this one is my favorite):

No matter which direction we choose to celebrate, I’m sure it will be great. Despite our lack of holiday finery in our house this year, I’m still very excited for Christmas and New Years and spending time relaxing with family and friends.

And here’s one more video to help you not forget the true meaning of Christmas (and because its my absolute favorite and warms my heart every single time I see it):